It would be easy to get the impression that the Covid Inquiry – with its relentless focus on bad language and offensive WhatsApp messages – has so far been a waste of time. But that’s not quite true: it’s been a massive waste of money too.
Today the Inquiry released its accounts for up to September 2023, which show that the cost of the lumbering investigation has already ballooned to £56 million, even though public hearings only began in June.
As you’d expect, the largest expenses so far have been on lawyers, with the Inquiry shelling out £19.6 million to keep 62 barristers (including 12 KCs) and a team of solicitors on the books. Another £11 million has then gone towards legal representation for key participants in the hearings.
As this army of lawyers is clearly not enough to keep the show on the road, the Inquiry has hired another 118 civil servants as well, who have cost the public purse £7 million. Meanwhile, the chair of the inquiry, Baroness Hallett, has managed to take home £260,000. No wonder the Inquiry is set to continue public hearings until 2026…
Mr S is perhaps more concerned though by the Inquiry’s other egregious spending. Its ‘Every Story Matters’ project, for example, has already run up costs of £5 million, and won’t slow down anytime soon. The project is calling for anyone to share their story from the pandemic, even if they never actually caught Covid or had an ‘experience that is directly related to the virus’. And, it has spent £3.4 million on advertising and communications to encourage people to take part. Presumably the Inquiry wants all 60 million people in Britain to participate – so it can then spend the next ten years trawling through their evidence at tremendous cost.
Finally, taxpayers will be glad to know that the Inquiry is also shelling out for private polling so it can, errrr, see how popular the Inquiry is. Can Mr S offer some tentative advice? If you really care what the public think, maybe stop throwing all this money down the drain…
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